


Context

by FreyaOdin



Series: Blink Outtakes [4]
Category: Pentatonix, Superfruit
Genre: Angst, Car Accidents, Emergency Medical Technicians, Gen, Hurt Mitch, Hurt Scott, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 15:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13192704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreyaOdin/pseuds/FreyaOdin
Summary: This is Mitch's perspective of the crash in my story Blink. Can stand alone, although if you want closure on how it turns out, you'll have to read the original





	Context

Mitch is bopping his head to the music, trying desperately not to laugh, because while he loves this track, downright adores it, he knows that any second now, Scott's going to say—

"What the fuck  _is_  this?"

Yep. That's the exact wording and intonation Mitch expected. Perfect.

"Phonic Æther's new track. I think it's cool. What? You don't like it?"

Might have something to do with the hypnotically repetitive screeching, the overdone syncopation, and the unresolved chord progressions, all recorded on a series of looping theremins.

Scott turns to look at him like he's insane as he pulls up behind another car at a red light. Mitch checks his phone. Huh. They're actually going to be on time for once.

"'Cool' would not have been the term I'd have chosen. Maybe... 'different'. Or 'unique'. Possibly 'creative' if I was in an especially generous mood."

Judging by the look on his face as the song hits the drop—something halfway between a pained wince and sucking on a lemon—Scott's not, in fact, in an especially generous mood.

This is the exact reaction Mitch was going for and it's  _everything_.

The light turns green and Scott refocuses his attention on the road after one last incredulous glance at Mitch. He takes his foot off the brake as Mitch's smirk finally breaks free.

"You think I should bring it to the band? Maybe we could cover it?" Mitch makes a show of opening up his note taking app, peering at it and pretending to mark it down. "Really stretch our genre, you know?"

The car eases into the intersection. "I think I'd rather—what the—  _shit!_ "

The car swerves violently as Scott jerks the wheel to the side. Mitch stabilizes himself with hand on the dashboard and frantically tries to see what's going on.

He doesn't find it before it hits. Doesn't understand what's happening when there's a huge smashing of metal on metal and glass breaking and the dashboard in front of him explodes in a pop of white, snapping his wrist back and to the side in a way that hurts worse than anything he remembers. There's a horn blaring and tires screeching and someone screaming and he's jerked to the side so suddenly it makes Scott's swerve seem subtle and God, he's never heard so much noise before, and, and, and...

And then there's a moment of silence, brief and still. It lasts a second, maybe two, because that's as much time as Mitch can go without inhaling, and when he does he can hear the sob in his own voice. And there's still metal creaking, and there's bits of glass clinking down around him. He opens his eyes—he clenched them shut somewhere along the way and judging by the shattered glass all around that was a really fantastic reflex to have—and sees blood. And destruction. And an odd bend in his wrist that suggests something is very, very wrong with it.

He's ashamed to say it takes him another long moment to remember where he is—Scott's car; and who else is with him—Scott. Who strangely isn't already swearing up a storm about his car and fussing over Mitch's wrist.

He turns towards the driver's seat.

It takes him an absurdly long time to parse what's in front of him into something that makes sense. And when it finally does he wishes it didn't.

Fuck.

Fuck no.

"Scott?"

The driver's side door is caved in; Scott's still in his seat but he's shoved over to the side, held up mostly by his seat belt. The majority of his left arm and part of his side aren't even visible through the collapsed metal and plastic and the airbags hanging all around. But there's blood. Mitch has never seen so much blood in real life and it's coming out of...

Scott's dead. Oh, God. Scott's dead. He's dead and Mitch can feel panic starting to swell up and claw at the inside his chest. Writhing and circling and consuming—

 _No!_  Another voice screams through the white noise filling his brain.  _Not dead!_   _Can't be dead. Not Scott. Can't be can't be can't be can't..._

Scott's head is tilted back and to the side, away from the crumpled door pinning him down and the crushed headlight of whatever it is that hit them, slumped against his head rest. There are cuts all over the left side of his face, an array of wounds spilling red everywhere, blood trailing down the stretched line of his neck and soaking into the collar of his once white T-shirt.

 _His neck._  Mitch can check his neck for a pulse, right? Scott's not dead if he has a pulse. Mitch can feel his own heartbeat hammering in his ears. If his is this loud, surely Scott's won't be hard to find?

But what if he can't find it? What if it just confirms...Mitch doesn't know how he'll survive if he confirms Scott is...

Mitch undoes his seatbelt and reaches out. His hand is shaking, even his unbroken one, and it too is spattered with blood. Fuck, he hopes it's his own, because if he's already spattered with Scott's blood, the nausea he can feel building is going to erupt and he'll vomit and won't that make this whole situation better? He'd really love being greeted by Scott in the afterlife then:  _"Mitch, oh my God, great to see you! Remember that time I died and you threw up on my corpse? LOL those were the days, huh?"_

Maybe Mitch hit his head harder than he thought.

He still hesitates, fingertips hovering, trembling above Scott's skin. He's reminded of something he read in a textbook once. Something about a cat that's neither alive nor dead until you open a box?

Mitch really doesn't want to open the box.

But Scott's not some unknown cat, he's  _Scott_. He needs Mitch to start helping him or mourning him, not stay in this limbo of his own cowardice forever.

He presses his fingers to Scott's skin, reassured to find it warm, although logically he knows Scott would still be warm either way. His stomach twists when he feels nothing for a moment. He draws his hand back, ready to succumb to his nausea or his panic, whichever comes first. But as his fingers smooth across Scott's skin, he thinks he feels something.

A flutter? He backtracks and presses more firmly. Thank God, yes. A distinct beat, weak but there, then another, and another. And now that he's so close he can feel Scott's breath gusting across his wrist, shallow and fast, but definitely present.

Scott's alive. Scott's breathing and his heart is beating and Mitch can feel his panic start to subside at just the thought. As it does, his rational brain starts kicking in, and he finally realizes he needs to call for help.

Which would have been a good thing to figure out immediately, wouldn't it? Fuck you very much, instinctual panic.

His phone...where the fuck is his phone? He looks around frantically, in his lap, in the cup holder, down by his feet. He spies it, finally, wedged in between his seat and the arm rest. He fishes it out awkwardly with his far hand, unable to get his left to cooperate in the slightest, and dials faster than he ever has in his life, cursing as his blood-slick fingers slip clumsily across the screen.

It rings twice before picking up. "911, what is your emergency?"

"Car accident," Mitch says, eyes back on Scott. "My friend's really hurt. I think—" Mitch swallows harshly against the lump forming in his throat as everything really starts to sink in on a deeper level than panic and denial. "Please, I think he might be dying."

He answers the woman's questions as best he can about who he is (Mitch, um, Mitchell Grassi) and where they are (the corner of Victory and fuck-I-don't-know-Valley-Glennish?) and Scott's condition (outright terrifying) and whether he himself is hurt (no—wait, maybe yes? The wrist thing suggests yes). There's movement outside the car now, a woman hesitantly circling around the front, a man gesturing wildly as he speaks into a phone. It's really hard to see what's going on through the dust and the shattered windows and the spent air bags and the big car or truck that's crushed in the whole driver's side. He thinks the woman might be trying to talk to him—or maybe to the driver of the other whatever it is—but he can't concentrate on her and answer the 911 operator's questions at the same time so it doesn't really matter.

Said operator is currently reassuring Mitch that help is on its way when a change in Scott's breathing catches his attention. There's a harsh gasp and then a moan. Scott's face scrunches up and his head lolls back and then forward on his head rest.

"Scott?"

Scott's grimace softens a bit. His eyelids flutter.

"Scott, answer me!" Mitch twists—fuck,  _not_ comfortable—in his seat, getting a knee under his butt so he can get closer, see better. It's hard to balance in the crumpled, dusty, debris-filled car when his only useful arm is clutching a phone to his ear and his whole body aches, but he manages it. "Please? Scotty, please!"

Scott's eyes blink open and make contact with his. Mitch gasps before he can stop himself; one of Scott's eyes looks like it's half-filled with blood. It's scary and foreign and not at all what he's used to seeing when he looks into Scott's eyes. But they're still beautiful and blue and exactly what Mitch needs to see right now.

Tangible proof of life.

"Mitch?" asks the woman on the phone. "Tell me what's happening. Are you okay?"

"He's awake." But even as Mitch says it, he's suddenly not sure. Scott's not reacting like he's aware of much and his gaze is already starting to drift away from Mitch's face. "Oh God, I think he's awake. But he's not— Scott?"

Scott's attention snaps back to Mitch's eyes, but then his forehead creases like it does whenever he's really confused. His mouth opens and closes like he can't get the words he wants to say to come out quite right. It's a look Mitch has seen plenty of times in the past, given Scott's not-always-stellar word-forming ability, except now nothing is coming out except harsh pants of air as he tries and fails to catch his breath.

The woman on the phone is still talking, but Mitch can't concentrate on her at all.

Scott's shaking; small, whole body shudders that he doesn't even seem to notice. His eyes begin to lose focus, growing more vacant as his gaze falls from Mitch's face to his torso.

"No, no, no! God, please don't pass out again, Scott." Or worse. Fuck, what if it's worse? "Stay with me, babe.  _Please._ "

But he doesn't. Unlike every other time Mitch can reasonably recall, Scott doesn't stay with him when he asks him to. His eyes close and his face relaxes somewhat, although his shaking doesn't entirely stop.

"Mitch?" says the voice in his ear, the one Mitch had almost forgotten about. "What's going on? Can you tell if Scott is still breathing?"

"Yes," Mitch says after a long second, after her words finally percolate into his brain. "Yes, he's breathing." He turns to peer out the windshield, squinting through the dust and web of cracks to try to see what's happening outside. "Are they going to be here soon? I can't...I can't help him and he  _really_  needs help."

"You're doing fine, Mitch. Can you hear the sirens? They should be almost there."

Yeah. Now that he's thinking about it, he can. They're actually pretty loud, which means he should have already been able to hear them. He doesn't know why he didn't.

It seems like an age, but it's probably only another few moments before there are two people in dark blue uniforms opening the doors on his side of the car, and another several in firefighting gear circling around it. Mitch hangs up his phone when he's told he can and turns towards his door.

A young white guy with seriously red hair crouches in the open doorway. "Hi there, I'm Henry," he says directly to Mitch before turning his attention briefly to Scott and then looking all around the car. "What's your name?"

"Mitch."

"How many people were in the car when it crashed, Mitch?"

Mitch blinks at him. That's his first question? "Uh, two."

"Just you and the driver?" Henry asks, peering at the dash before reaching across Mitch's lap and pulling the parking brake up. "No one who got out? No kids were in the back?"

Kids? "Just Scott and me. Scott's hurt."

Henry nods and leans father across him, pulling the keys from the ignition with a sharp flick of his wrist.

A black woman, maybe fifteen to twenty years older than Henry, climbs into the back seat, tossing debris out of the car behind her as she goes. "Visible skids from this car, looks like he tried to swerve. None they can see behind the truck."

"Not good," Henry says. "Christine and Charlie have the truck?"

"Yep," the woman confirms. "Third rig is en route. Fire's assessing best way to extract our driver." She wedges herself in between the front seats, facing Scott. "Airbags?"

"All look popped."

"Small favors." Mitch can't tell what she's doing, but it's only a few seconds before she says, "He's breathing but already in shock. He needs a line and a mask. I need room."

"Okay, Mitch," Henry says, and Mitch turns back to look at him. "Did you lose consciousness at all?"

No? No. "I don't think so."

"You were wearing your seat belt?"

"Yes."

"Anything hurting as bad as your wrist? Does your neck hurt?"

A lot of things hurt, but not as badly. And his neck seems fine. "No."

"You can move everything else? You've been turning your head and you're sitting up without help, that's great."

Mitch nods. Henry looks pleased.

"That's real good. I'm going to help you out of the car now, and then we'll check out your wrist and the rest of you and get you to a hospital so they can fix you up properly, okay?"

"I can't leave Scott." It comes out before Mitch even thinks about it, before he consciously decides to say anything at all. But it doesn't matter because it's the truth.

"You can't do anything for him here. Wouldn't he want you taken care of too?"

Yeah, he would. But fuck that; Scott's unconscious so he doesn't get a say. "I won't leave him!"

"Henry," the woman interrupts from where she's twisted herself into the gap between Mitch and Scott's seats, shining a flashlight into Scott's face. "Get him outside and stabilized and  _then_  argue about leaving, not while you're both sitting in the middle of my damn way."

Henry winces at the rebuke, but so does Mitch. Scott needs help and his door is crushed. The paramedics need the passenger seat clear to save him and Mitch is  _in the fucking way_.

Henry helps him painfully get out and limp over to one of the ambulances parked nearby. It's chaos. There are two fire trucks now parked defensively around Scott's crumpled Camaro and the white delivery truck that crushed it. A cop is directing traffic around the scene and people are staring as they slowly drive by. Another two paramedics have an older man on the ground near the front of the truck. One of them is performing CPR while the other is hooking him up to a machine of some sort.

Henry gets Mitch seated on a stretcher beside the ambulance, a compromise since Mitch refuses to actually get in it yet. He pokes and prods and moves Mitch's limbs in various ways, some of which hurt a lot, some of which don't really. He talks to him the entire time, asking questions about his medical history and about Scott's. It's helpful, actually. The distraction of trying to think of the answers helps Mitch forget his pain, although not his worry, and he wonders if Henry's doing that on purpose.

The suspicion solidifies when Henry basically asks for his life story while splinting his wrist. Not that Mitch minds; the manoeuvre hurts like a bitch even with the dose of whatever it was Henry injected into him and he's grateful for the distraction of figuring out how much to tell at the moment.

Once Mitch is settled, a blanket around his shoulders, his wrist stabilized, a bottle of water sitting beside him, and a kindly worded but obvious threat about staying put, Henry heads back to the car to let his partner know everything Mitch has just told him about Scott. A third ambulance has arrived by this point, one of the medics is in the backseat helping with whatever they're doing for Scott, and another is conferring with more firefighters who have just arrived in a huge red monstrosity that looks like it's half fire truck and half crane. The other driver seems to have been taken away while Mitch was being tended to.

Mitch shivers, even though it's got to be 85 degrees and he has a blanket around him. He pulls it tighter, as best as he can, but it doesn't seem to help.

There's a bunch of activity in the car now. Mitch can faintly hear the female paramedic speaking more slowly to someone and then Scott's voice is calling for him, loud and frantic. He starts to get up, to go to him, but a sharp look from Henry has him settling back down. The woman's voice grows softer, more soothing, and Scott stops yelling.

Fuck, he can't handle this. He feels useless.

He should...he should call someone, maybe? Tell them what's happened? He's still clutching his phone, so he turns it on and thumbs through to his contacts.

He wants to hear his mom's voice, honestly, or his dad's. But it'd be selfish to call them when it's Connie and Rick who need to know first, right? But Mitch feels nauseous just thinking about telling them Scott's so seriously hurt.

Management. He should call management? Let Jonathon and the team figure out what should happen? But that seems cold, even though Jonathon is also their friend. Maybe that's stupid but it just doesn't feel...

Wait.  _Esther_. He'll call Esther. Not family, at least not his, but pretty fucking close. Tour manager but not "management". And someone who's really good at solving crises at a moment's notice. She'll know what to do, and if she doesn't, she'll figure it out.

He calls and she's perfect. Concerned, scared, but a voice of reason in his ear. She tells him not to worry, she'll take care of letting everyone else know who needs to. She'll contact Scott's parents and Mitch's too. All Mitch needs to do is call her back when he knows what hospital they're being taken to.

It's perfect. She's perfect. Mitch isn't calm when he hangs up, but he has several fewer things to worry about, so it's a relief all the same. But only momentarily because Scott's still stuck in that car, and Mitch is still stuck out here, and there's absolutely dick all he can do to help him.

Mitch wishes he could be closer so he could at least see what was happening more clearly, but that's obviously not going to happen. Intellectually, he gets it. They need him safe and out of the way. They're hooking up a giant...hook thing to the back of the white truck at the moment and he can just imagine the ways interfering with that could go wrong. But it's  _so fucking hard_  to sit here and not know what's happening to the most important person in his life.

He  _hates_  this.

The woman tosses another piece of debris out her door every once in a while. An oxygen tank is sitting just outside it; Mitch doesn't know when that appeared. A blanket and then a bigger tarp-looking thing are passed inside.

Eventually the firefighters have finished hooking everything up to their satisfaction. There's some final discussion through the narrow bit of driver's side window that's not full of truck. A couple of moments later both paramedics get out of the car and back away.

Then the giant tow truck crane fire engine starts to pull and there's a loud screeching as damaged metal pulls apart and the delivery truck is finally pulled away from Scott's Camaro. The more disturbing part is the scream Mitch thinks he hears briefly before it cuts off. He can't be sure, there was so much noise, but it's enough to get him up and off the stretcher.

Henry catches him. Blocks his way as he stumbles blindly toward the car. Holds his upper arms and gets in his face until Mitch has no choice but to focus on what he's saying.

"—kay, Mitch. They're already back in, look. They're going to cut him free of the rest of the car and then he'll be out and on his way to the hospital before you know it. You with me, Mitch? It's not safe for you to go to him. Linda's taking good care of him. You can stay until he's out, but then we're all going to the hospital."

Right. Okay. That makes...that makes sense. "Can I ride with him? In the ambulance?" Movies always let that happen, right?

But Henry's shaking his head. "No, I'm sorry. Linda needs her full attention on Scott. He's too badly hurt to have a civilian distracting her, even if you weren't injured yourself. And what if you're hurt worse than we think and destabilize? Then she has to take care of two seriously injured patients with not enough hands or equipment. She could lose you both."

That's stupid. Mitch is fine. He's just got a broken arm and a bump to his head and he's bruised and shaken up, and okay. Maybe fine is the wrong word. Maybe he can see Henry's point. But that means they'll be separated at least on the way to the hospital. And what if they end up at different hospitals? That happens sometimes, right? Maybe? Mitch isn't sure, but the possibility is unacceptable.

He has a sudden thought on how to make sure they stay together, which in this case just happens to be true. "I have his medical proxy!" Wait, that wasn't what it had been called on the forms they'd signed for the label. "Uh, healthcare power of attorney? I can't remember what it's called, but I'm who makes decisions for him if he can't do it himself." That might not be entirely accurate, come to think og it. Technically speaking Mitch is the primary agent when Connie and Rick aren't available, like when they're on tour. Or if the Hoyings are in the air, which they no doubt will be as soon as Esther gets them a flight. So Mitch will in fact be in charge of making any decisions until they get to LA.

 _Fuck,_  Mitch will be in charge of making decisions until they get to LA. It all seemed so logical when they were joking around signing the forms. Their parents first, then each other, then Esther. Family, the person they trust most on tour, and the person they trust most on tour who can get shit done. But they were never supposed to actually need it. It was a thought exercise. A hypothetical.

Jesus, what the fuck does Mitch know about making medical decisions? What if he fucks it up? What if Scott dies because of some choice Mitch has to make? What if he lives but never forgives him? What if--

Oh good, his circling, all-encompassing panic is back. And he'd just gotten used to the relief of only feeling his underlying terror.

Whatever Henry's about to say in response to all of this is drowned out by the sound of a large machine starting up and Mitch is suddenly watching four firefighters breaking what remains of the windows of Scott's car before that machine is cutting off the roof of Scott's car. And then, after Linda fusses under the tarp-blanket-thing they seem to have covering most of Scott, another machine is prying the crumpled remains of Scott's door right off.

There's another flurry of activity, this time involving a backboard and bandages and more blood than Mitch ever wants to see again, and then they've got Scott out and are wheeling him to the ambulance beside the one Mitch is standing in front of.

Scott looks...fuck. Scott looks pale and still and small. He's unconscious, tied down to a backboard, wearing an oxygen mask, and covered with a blanket and more bandages than Mitch has ever seen before. He only gets a brief look as he's rushed by, but it's enough to reinforce how very fucking terrifying all of this is.

Then Scott's loaded into the ambulance and the female paramedic is climbing in with him and the doors are slamming and it's driving away with its siren blaring and Mitch is being herded into his own ambulance and he's being strapped into a seat and hooked up to a blood pressure thing and his head is being prodded at and...

"Where are we going?" he asks, suddenly remembering Esther's request. "What hospital?"

"Cedars-Sinai," Henry says, writing something on a clipboard. He looks up and smiles reassuringly. "Scott's heading there too. You need to tell someone?"

Mitch nods and fumbles with the phone he's still clutching until he manages to dial. Esther answers right away.

"We're going to Cedars-Sinai," he says.

"Okay, good. Thank you." There's the sound of typing, barely discernable over the rumble of the ambulance and its intermittent siren. Her voice is soft and comforting, but she's clearly multitasking. "How's Scott?"

"I don't...it's bad, Es. He's...it's bad." He doesn't even know how bad. He just knows he can't face this alone for much longer. "Can you come?"

"I'll be there as soon as I can, honey," she says gently, still typing, still working. "I have to finish notifying people and arranging flights and security."

"Okay. I just..." He can do this. He can hold it together until Esther gets there, however long it takes, right? Right?

"Kirstie's on her way. She'll meet you there."

Oh, thank  _fuck_. He needs somebody there, and Kirstie is perfect. "Good. That's good."

The typing pauses. "We've got this, Mitchy. It'll be okay."

He wants to believe her. He really, really does. It's just that the crack in her voice at the end of her sentence suggests she doesn't even believe it herself. But she's holding it together somehow, getting shit done. So maybe he can too? At least for a little while?

"Okay," he says. He leans his head back against his seat, tries not to flinch when the siren starts up again and the horn blares as the ambulance continues on its way.

His head hurts. His arms hurts. His  _heart_  hurts.

The day feels like it's lasted forever and it's not even noon.

Henry smiles kindly and says something Mitch doesn't catch. Starts to clean out some of the cuts on Mitch's face, checks his pain level, but Mitch isn't paying him much attention. The whole thing is surreal and he's under no delusions that it'll get better once they're at the hospital. There will be more people, more chaos, more decisions and stuff happening. More stress and worry and fear.

But he doesn't have a choice. He has to do this for Scott. And honestly, that's probably the only reason he'll be able to get through it at all.

His phone rings, startling him. It's only when he sees who's calling that the tears he's been too overwhelmed or numb in turns to shed start to fall. He clears his throat, swallows painfully, and then gratefully accepts the call.

"Hi Mom."

 

 

**Thoughts?**


End file.
